Friday, September 16, 2016

Republicans: Don't Vote For Donald Trump ... by gimleteye

In the New York Times, Tom Friedman writes: "Donald Trump's Putin Crush": "Can you imagine the damage Trump could do to the fabric of our democracy if he had the White House pulpit from which to preach his post-truth politics — how it would filter down into public discourse at large and infect every policy debate?"

Actually, in Miami-Dade we know all about post-truth politics.

Post-truth politics is a good way to describe our various ills: how traffic became so bad in Miami-Dade, how quality of life degraded under the disguise of low-cost water, low-cost conversion of wetlands to sprawl, and so forth.

Voting for Trump is like putting a magnifying glass to a dry leaf to watch it burn.

Donald Trump can lead post-truth politics; his business career is based on a changeable relationship with contracts. That's the best way to describe serial business failures that he claims to be "the greatest": post-truth.

As more than one observer pointed out; Donald Trump would be wealthier today if he had taken his nest egg and invested in an index fund. That's one reason he won't release his tax forms.

Putting a CEO in charge of the world's most important economy, whose only achievements come on the back of broken contracts, is insanity.

Here is the NY Times OPED: "Donald Trump's Putin Crush":

When it comes to rebutting Donald Trump’s idiotic observation that Vladimir Putin is a strong leader — “far more than our president has been a leader” — it is hard to top the assessment of Russian-born Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion, which The Times’s Andrew Higgins quoted in his story from Moscow: “Vladimir Putin is a strong leader in the same way that arsenic is a strong drink. Praising a brutal K.G.B. dictator, especially as preferable to a democratically elected U.S. president, whether you like Obama or hate him, is despicable and dangerous.”

Indeed, Kasparov’s point cuts to the core of what is so scary about a Trump presidency: Trump is what The Economist has called “the leading exponent of ‘post-truth’ politics — a reliance on assertions that ‘feel true’ but have no basis in fact,” and, sadly, “his brazenness is not punished, but taken as evidence of his willingness to stand up to elite power.” When politics becomes “like pro-wrestling,” society pays a huge cost, The Economist added, because any complex explanation of any problem is dismissed as experts just trying “to bamboozle everyone else.”

So Trump just skips from blaming Mexican immigrants for high murder rates, to President Obama for inventing ISIS, to China for creating the concept of global warming, to thousands of Muslims in New Jersey for celebrating 9/11, to Obama for really having been born in Kenya, to an I.R.S. audit for preventing him from showing us his tax returns — which would probably show that he paid no taxes.

Every word of it is a lie that most in his own party won’t call out. Can you imagine the damage Trump could do to the fabric of our democracy if he had the White House pulpit from which to preach his post-truth politics — how it would filter down into public discourse at large and infect every policy debate?

“Donald Trump has not only brought haters into the mainstream, he has normalized hate for a much broader swathe of the population who were perhaps already disaffected but had their grievances and latent prejudices held in check by social norms,” observed Josh Marshall, publisher of TalkingPointsMemo.com, in his blog on Saturday. “This isn’t some minor point or critique. It’s a fundamental part of what is at stake in this election, what makes it different from Obama v. Romney. … This election has become a battle to combat the moral and civic cancer Trump has [been] injecting into the body politic.”

Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter
Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, the Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.

Think about the ridiculous trope Trump has been peddling, that if only Obama were as “strong” as Putin. Well, if he were, here are some of the benefits America would enjoy:

A 2015 report in The Moscow Times noted that “life expectancy in Russia has been growing several times slower than in the rest of the world for the past 20 years, according to a research by the U.S.-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.” That coincides almost exactly with Putin’s leadership of the country. The article explained, “During the period of 1990-2013 [life expectancy] only grew by 1.8 years in Russia, while the global average number increased by 6.2 years, pushing Russia out of the top 100 countries with the highest life expectancy and placing it in 108th position — between Iraq and North Korea.”

Why don’t we have a leader strong enough to slow gains in the life expectancy of an entire nation?

An investigation by the World Anti-Doping Agency released last summer found that Putin’s Russia was operating a state-sponsored doping scheme for four years across the “vast majority” of Summer and Winter Olympic sports. According to a July 18, 2016, BBC report on the investigation, “Russia’s sports ministry ‘directed, controlled and oversaw’ manipulation of urine samples provided by its athletes.” Scores of Russian athletes were barred from the Rio Olympics as a result.

I get it: A weak president doesn’t dare tamper with his Olympic athletes. A strong president dopes up his Summer and Winter Olympic teams for multiple Games.

Since Putin invaded Ukraine to shore up his faltering domestic popularity, and then got hit with Western economic sanctions, the dollar-ruble exchange rate has gone from around 36 rubles to the dollar to 65 rubles to the dollar. Russia’s economic growth fell 3.7 percent in 2015, and the I.M.F. predicts it will fall 1 percent in 2016. Inflation in Russia doubled to 15.4 percent in 2015, compared with 7.8 percent in 2014. A World Bank report quoted by the BBC in April said “the number of Russians living below the poverty line will grow at its fastest pace in more than 17 years in 2016.”

It takes a strong leader to shrink his currency by 50 percent, double inflation and vastly accelerate poverty in just two years. A weak leader could never do that.

Putin is a leader who is always looking for dignity in all the wrong places — by investing in bullying wars, not in his own people; by jailing and likely poisoning his opponents; and by being so insecure that he just shut Russia’s last independent polling firm after it indicated that many Russians may not vote in the coming parliamentary elections because, among other things, they think they’re “rigged.”

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

Aligning himself with a brutal dictator makes no sense for someone who wants to be the leader of the free world. It is an interesting discussion.

But, the question I am waiting for someone to ask is the one involving reptile people among us. The guy who he hired over his campaign promulgates the belief on his website that their are reptile people from outer space posing as regular human beings walking among us. That question would be something like this: Do you believe in the existence of reptile people from outer space walking among us as discussed by the head of your campaign? If so, as president how do you intend to address this issue?

Follow us by Email

Quotes hall of fame - worth another look:

Jonathon Dunlop of Australia about the Miami Airport:"This is the most disorganized shambles of an airport that exists on this earth.''April 01, 2007 Eye on Miami Comment on Post__________________________________On "Colony Collapse Disorder":Anonymous said...I say lets wait till the last tree is going to be cut down, the last bit of oil used, the last lowland coastal areas flooded before we make any rash decisions that might effect the economy.April 21, 2007 Eye on Miami Comment_________________________________On Bee “Colony Collapse Disorder” being blamed on cell phones:Anonymous said...Hmmm. What are bees doing with cell phones, anyhow?April 20, 2007 Eye on Miami Comment_________________________________On South Florida Water Supply:Ron Littlepage said...Unfortunately, we know who would win when it comes to allowing development to run amok and it's not the wildlife.April 20, 2007 Eye on Miami Comment Post_________________________________Lesley Blackner said:In Florida, the sad reality is that government exists to serve the development machine, not the citizenry. That's why it's proper to say that in Florida we have government of the developer, by the developer and for the developer.April 22, 2007 Eye on Miami Post_________________________________On City of Miami and Miami Dade County giving $1,000,000 each to Jorge Perez’s Related Group (The Group's 2005 revenues were $3.25 billion.):"It makes as much sense as me donating half my paycheck to Warren Buffett.”May 6, 2007 Miami Herald Columnist Ana Menendez_________________________________On the FCAT Test:"'Florida is a serial mis-user of test scores.''Bob Schaeffer, director for Massachusetts-based FairTest.May 25, 2007 Miami Herald_________________________________Clifford Schulman (Greenberg Traurig Lobbyist):"This is the first time in 33 years that any one has accused me of fraud." June 28, 2007 Miami HeraldI say: hmm.__________________________________Max Rameau, Homeless Activist:"I respect Ron Book for his work with the Homeless Trust, but the Liberty City community and others have given broad support to this idea. I don't know that a big-time millionaire lobbyist can tell us what is best for Liberty City and the black community.'' July 28, 2007 Miami Herald__________________________________"After years of mismanagement under a board of political appointees and neighborhood activists, Miami-Dade County administrators have proposed a new way to run the troubled empowerment zone program. The plan: Bring in new political appointees and neighborhood activists."November 6, 2007 Miami Herald: Reporter Scott Hiaasen______________________________________"Saying "Greater Everglades" and "Northern Everglades" is not saying Everglades -- other places are deserving of being protected too, but there is only one Everglades. The main thing is to keep the 'Main Thing' the main thing -- which, lately, has not been the main thing." Bob Mooney - on Listserve "Everglades Commons"________________________________________"Does anyone in their right mind believe that Florida could conduct postal balloting without a major screw-up or scandal? Heavens, no! The whole country is keenly aware that our state is a sump hole of incompetence and corruption."Carl Hiaasen - March 16, 2008 Miami Herald_______________________________________On the Charter Review: "Commissioners want us to vote on their own pet changes, ideas the review team explicitly rejected. And, they're throwing their blatantly self-serving ballot questions at us at the same time. What a slap in the face to the charter review team — and to all of us!" Michael Lewis of Miami Today - April 10, 2008______________________________________On the Miami Dade County Commission:''Unfortunately, this is a commission that would build a cyanide factory next to a playground if you hired the right 12 lobbyists,'' Miami Lakes Councilman Michael Pizzi - May 14, 2008______________________________________"The days where we’re just building sprawl forever, those days are over. I think that Republicans, Democrats, everybody recognizes that that’s not a smart way to build communities." President Barack Obama in Fort Meyers - February 10, 2009______________________________________"So."Dick Cheney's response when told that two thirds of Americans did not support the war in Iraq. - Time Magazine 2008______________________________________"It seems like a bad idea can always find a home in the Florida Legislature." - Howard Simon - Executive Director of Florida ACLU - March 24, 2010

______________________________________Complete this sentence: South Florida really needs a..."Regional plan for controlled growth (before it becomes a concrete jungle similar to Houston), and a completely new set of elected officials that make decisions based on what's good for the future of South Florida instead of what's good for their wallets. - Jack McCabe, Real Estate expert who predicted the housing boom's end. - August 29, 2011 Miami Herald